Jump In.

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

Haidt uses an elephant to represent emotions and the rider of the elephant as reason. Reason attempt to control emotions but is often unsuccessful. This book helps define and clarify what truly makes people happy and what steps you can take to get there

Key Takeaways

Happiness doesn’t just come from within as the Buddha or other sages claim. It comes from somewhere between in and out – people need both strong social ties, good relationships and being content from within to be happy

Control your perceptions and you can control your world. There is no reality, only perception

Central belief of Hinduism is that we all have our role to play and should play it well but not be attached to the results or outcomes. Be unmoved by praise or blame and contented with whatever comes your way. This mindset is required for happiness

Decide that you do not want events to happen a certain way but that you want them to happen as they do happen. Amor Fati

Success is often more often received with relief than ecstasy

Feel more joy while making progress towards your goal than when you actually accomplish your goal. The journey and not the destination is what counts

Left vs right. Left side of your brain is more for language processing and right side for distinguishing patterns. Confabulation is the concept that people come up with reasons for what they do for everything, even if don’t truly know why they did something.

New vs old. New brain used for more complex tasks, patterns, expansions of emotional range, etc. whereas old brain is more primal and instinctive.

Controlled vs automatic processes. Subliminal messages about professors make you smarter and if image shows soccer hooligans, it make you dumber. These subliminal images have shown that they have a noticeable effect on how we think and proves that most mental processes are automatic.

The rider (reason) cannot make the elephant (emotion) do what it does not want to. Reason is the slave of emotions and we should not kid ourselves by thinking otherwise

3 quirks of rider and elephant

Failure of self control- marshmallow experiment of delayed gratification. Help self-control by avoiding negative stimuli or changing it when it is around.

Mental intrusions – experiments by telling people not to think about something makes them a little obsessed with this thing

Moral judgments are often implicit. Mind is made up of many parts but we give far too much attention and power to one part – conscious verbal thinking

2- Changing Your Mind

Control your perceptions and you can control your world. There is no reality, only perception

3 tools to retrain the elephant

Like vs dislike – determine your level of liking of anything but realize that it can be influenced subliminally

Negativity bias- bad experiences avoided more strongly than good experiences sought out

The cortical lottery – some people are born with a more negative mindset than others and genes have more influence upon our happiness than most people realize.

People believe they often make unbiased opinions but often they read into and follow up on information that only confirms their already established opinions

People don’t see the true extent of what there do and overestimate their own goodness

Evil and negative emotions are contagious

People often do evil things but believe they are doing them for good reasons. Often high self-esteem and moral idealism are the reasons people do evil things

As often as possible look at things from others’ point of view and you’ll often find they’re not crazy and have some valid points

5- The Pursuit of Happiness

Happiness comes primarily from within yourself but there are some outer things worth striving for

The adaptation principle describes that people are much better at adapting to situations than they think and are very bad at predicting how they’ll feel in the future

People have a baseline of expectations and goals and happiness is directly tied to this baseline. If you win lottery, your baseline rises and soon after we base happiness on this new level. Ultimately, what happens to you doesn’t really matter as you will recalibrate your goals and expectations

Hedonic treadmill – happiness adjusts to our situation, what we’ve done and where we are. As we accomplish more, we expect and desire more and therefore cannot gain permanent happiness

Money buys happiness but only up to a certain level

Strong social ties and a good marriage the most important factors for happiness

Pleasures should be spread out and varied. Variety is the spice of life since we cannot adapt to it

Gratification comes from accomplishing something and happiness derived from gratification lasts much longer than sensual pleasures

Happier people spend more time and money on inconspicuous expenses such as experiences and good food than on conspicuous expenses such as an expensive watch

6- Love and Attachments

Harlow created a monkey farm in Wisconsin with a “perfect” environment but none of the monkeys developed normal social skills. Monkeys clung to fake, soft “mom” as opposed to the one made of wire but had food. Determined that love and social attachment are essential for primates and humans to develop normally

Passionate and compassionate love. Passionate love is euphoric but doesn’t last long and compassionate love focuses on the good of the other. True love is compassionate love with spurts of passion

Can be morally opposed to something but until you have an emotion which compels you to follow it, you won’t. Haidt uses his personal example of not adhering to vegetarianism until he actually saw slaughterhouse footage

Important to also develop your strengths instead of just working on weaknesses

Doing the right thing does not always feel good

Social and other constraints are healthy and necessary to be happy

9- Divinity With or Without God

Argues humans can see another dimension – morality/divinity

Disgust is an evolutionary trait and is the guardian of the temple in the body

People get a sense of elevation when they see someone do something virtuous

The development of the self extremely important but holds us back when it comes to self realization because it focuses our attention on trivial things and keeps people’s focus on the material world, Growth of spiritual self often means killing of the self

10- Happiness Comes From Between

Love and having the right goals is very important for happiness

Get more joy from making progress towards goals than actually achieving the goals

Culture evolves too and at a very rapid pace since it can usually be adopted quickly

Mysticism always about uniting with some larger being(s). Masters of meditation or yoga can achieve a state in which they lose the limits of their body and becomes one with everything. Loss of self and paradoxical expansion of self into space. Repetitive, synchronized movements, especially with others, helps induce this state

Happiness comes from between in and out. Can only give yourself right environment and let everything else work itself out